social media channels

There’s no denying it — budgets are tighter than ever and more than a handful of GMs will have already looked at every expense several times.

We’re no fools, of course, and we know that we need to keep advertising and marketing, even when times are tough. Besides, (potential) guests still want to be engaged online and continue to message you with questions and comments, which require speedy replies.

Social and digital media marketing has a reputation for cost effectiveness, but more is needed. So how can you lower your social media costs without compromising effectiveness?

Tough times call for tough measures and — as a GM friend reminded me a little while ago — no expense is sacred anymore.

Provided somebody who knows what he or she is doing runs your social media activities, bigger budgets, both time and money-wise, usually produce bigger results. Having said that, there are a number of ways to reduce your monthly social media costs without compromising results overly much.

As so often, the key is to look at the auxiliary costs first, before reducing paid advertising spend or man-hours. Now is the time to audit all the little apps and software your team is using to see if they’re all still needed or if you could do without them, at least for a while.

Sure, most of them are only a couple of dollars per month, but it all adds up.

Are you using a social media scheduling and analytics dashboard? Check that you’re still getting the best deal. You might want to temporarily switch to a cheaper provider or even do without a dashboard.

Also make sure you’re really using all the functions an app or a piece of software offers. For example: you might subscribe to Revinate and also pay a monthly fee for a social media scheduling dashboard.

If most of your social media activity is on Facebook and Twitter, Revinate offers scheduling to these platforms as part of its service. In other words: make sure you’re not paying twice for the same service.

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